


You Must Not Miss

by rogueshadows



Series: The Pilot and the Partisan [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Twins, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 00:26:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13915461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rogueshadows/pseuds/rogueshadows
Summary: When Bokan Rook is eighteen years old he loses his twin brother.Prequel to One for Sorrow, Two for Joy.





	You Must Not Miss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bright_Elen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen/gifts).
  * Inspired by [One for Sorrow, Two for Joy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11625474) by [Bright_Elen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen/pseuds/Bright_Elen), [misskatieleigh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misskatieleigh/pseuds/misskatieleigh). 



> Happy Birthday Bright_Elen! :D
> 
> An attempt at playing in the twin sandbox, graciously beta'd by misskatieleigh <3

When Bokan Rook is eighteen years old he loses his twin brother.

“The Imperial recruiters were in the marketplace. I signed up,” Bodhi says, and the kitchen falls to silence, their mother stopping dead where she’d been preparing dinner. 

“What do you mean you’ve _signed up_?” Bokan asks incredulously, a feeling of deep shame rising in his chest, one he’s never felt about his brother before. One he’d never expected to.

“Bokan,” Amara, his mother says, tears already welling in her eyes. She looks at a loss, a loss Bodhi put in her heart with his naive actions. Beneath that is a resignation, like somehow she’d been expecting this. Bodhi looks stricken and pained, jaw tense as he looks down at his hands.

“I’ve signed on and there’s nothing to be done for it. We needed...we _need_ the credits, can’t you see that?” Bodhi speaks defensively. Bokan feels nothing but rage.

“We _need_ to stay together - to fight these monsters, not join them!”

“Keep your voice down,” his mother says. She’s not looking at him, she’s staring at Bodhi like her heart has broken beyond fight. Bokan can’t watch it anymore, can’t stand the way she steps close, reaching out to touch Bodhi’s arm like he’s deserving of her comfort. He leaves the room, storming out of the house and feeling like he might be sick.

“Bokan!” he hears Bodhi call after him. Bokan refuses to look back until he hears Bodhi’s footfalls too close, feels the hand on his elbow. He jerks to face his brother, ripping away from his grip.

“Bokan, you knew this was coming,” Bodhi tries, but Bokan shakes his head. The opportunistic loom of the Empire in their city wasn’t something he was blind to, of course, but he’d never imagined Bodhi would be one to fall for their cheap incentives. What were their lives worth if they gave in so easily to the evil around them? If they helped them _win_ and break the spirit of the galaxy then what was the point in surviving?

“No brother of mine is an Imp, you chose this! You’re nothing to me now.”

Bokan won’t cry for the sorrow he feels, Bodhi doesn’t deserve it. Bodhi stands stock still, staring at his brother like it’s _his_ heart that has been ripped out. Like Bokan is the one running to the service of murderers.

Bodhi takes a shuddering breath, like he’s trying to keep his resolve.

“You don’t mean that,” Bodhi says, “You can’t...you can’t understand how hard this is, Bokan, but we have to survive. You’ll understand...”

“You’ll lose your soul before that, or you’ll die. I hope the credits are worth it.”

Bodhi opens his mouth to speak, to her or to both of them, and Bokan can’t listen any longer, he won’t. He walks away, down a worn path he knows well to where he can be alone. Bodhi could follow easy, could trace the steps in his sleep from all the times they’ve run off together. He doesn’t. Bokan is grateful and disappointed all at once, that Bodhi is too cowardly to even try. 

In the morning when he comes back, from a night slept in the dunes, his brother is _gone_.

\---

When the explosion goes off in the marketplace, Bokan is twenty years old. He is lost in the rubble and presumed dead. If it wasn’t for the Partisans scouring the building’s wreckage for supplies, he would have been.The Imperial forces had destroyed a city block in pursuit of one man, not caring who they left broken in their path. He doesn’t remember being taken back to the catacombs. While the Partisans don’t have much to offer, they set Bokan’s bones and sew his wounds, giving him at least a fighting chance. He awakens to the sight of the stone ceiling overhead and wonders if he’s dead, then takes stock of the skull sitting in a nearby alcove and feels doubly stricken. A voice breaks through his fear, along with a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t panic, son,” the man says, as if he had read Bokan’s thoughts. Bokan blinks back into reality, remembering the explosion and not much of the fallout. The faces that had hovered over him and taken him from the rubble felt like a dream and yet here he was alive. His body sears with pain still and he tries to swallow to it, unable to speak until a stone faced young woman hands him a glass of water. He eases himself up slowly, figuring if they were going to kill him they wouldn’t have patched him up in the first place. He takes in the image of the man, clad in heavy machinery, and realizes who he is with a sudden clarity. 

“You’re Saw Gerrera,” Bokan says, voice rough and awed. At the revelation the man only stares at first, as if gauging Bokan’s reaction. The Partisan close by looks ready to strike at any moment.

“Yes, and how you feel about that fact is going to determine your future,” Saw says seriously. Bokan had never sought out the Partisans, even though he knew they were out there fighting for the people. He’d always read the pirated data packs that got passed around, always felt a spark of hope in tracking rebel victories that way. That’s why it had burned him up inside so much when Bodhi left to blindly join the monsters that were destroying their home. No money was worth that. For all their mother had forbidden it, Bodhi went anyway. Gave up his ideals and his family, all for a chance at the stars. In pain from injuries, Bokan lets that resentment turn to resolve. 

“How I feel is honored,” he answers roughly, through the pain drumming in his cracked ribs, “I know you fight for justice for our people, for the whole galaxy. You’ve saved my life on top of that and I’m indebted to your service.” Though he knows how overwrought the words must seem, Saw smiles at them, just a quirk of the lips. He nods to the woman and she leaves, looking somewhat less suspicious, but still alert..

“We’ll save the dream yet,” Saw says with finality. He leaves then too, pausing only to add, “Rest up.We have much to do.”

\---

Saw comes back,hours or maybe days later. It’s hard to think still. Bokan tries to prop himself up at the sight of Saw, only to be pushed back by an easy hand at his shoulder.

“I’m an engineer,” Bokan works out, past the haze of dull pain, “If it matters, I know machines like my own bones. Probably better.”

“You know Imperial tech?” Saw asks seriously, and Bokan nods. 

“Worked scavenging from it mostly, taking parts to adapt for people’s speeders and vaporators. I’ve taken apart droids too, dumped down in the scrap yard. Probe droids and KXs mostly.”

Saw nods at the words as if considering, already deep in thought. The man seems like he’s ten steps ahead of Bokan, and he offers an approving look.

“You could be an asset, my boy,” Saw says, reaching out to pat Bokan on the shoulder.

Bokan feels a buzz of anticipation, and something akin to pride.

\---

The woman who always stands on the periphery of his conversations with Saw wanders in and out, seeming to check on him while at the same time seeming indifferent. She’s tall, with skin not much darker than his own, and dark long hair twisted up in braids. He thinks she must be his age, if not younger, and yet she carries herself like a hardened soldier. One day without pretense she sits on the side of his bed and gives him a sharp look as if examining him before she speaks.

“How long are you going to lay about?” she asks, with a lilting accent that makes him wonder how she wound up on Jedha when she’s clearly not native. She’s only half serious, he thinks, but he raises an eyebrow anyway.

“Until my ribs stop feeling like they’re tearing my chest open, I suppose,” he answers dryly. He winces even as he sits up to speak and she shakes her head.

“That’s no excuse, but you’re new...so I’ll accept it,” she says. Bokan doesn’t know what to make of her really and is surprised when she sticks her hand out. He accepts and she introduces herself.

“I’m Jordi. I found you,” she says, and when he focuses Bokan can half remember her face hovering over him in the dust. 

“Bokan. I’m glad I’m around to say thank you,” he answers and her mouth tips into a smile. 

“You can thank me by helping. I have something I’d like you to look at, if it’s not too strenuous,” she says like a challenge, not cruel, but prodding nonetheless. Bokan breathes deeply through the edge of pain and nods. He half imagines she’s going to stick him under some engine somewhere, heeding no mind to his injuries at all. When she places a data pad in his hands instead he nearly sighs in relief.

“Read up for now,” she says, glancing over him once more before she goes.

The data pad holds files upon files of schematics to Imperial machinery, Bokan can’t help but wonder how they got them, how many Partisans had died in the process. He reads into the night and his mind sparks with ways to dismantle the machines and reprogram them, tangible ways to disrupt the Empire he’d never been able to consider before.

When Jordi comes back the next day, he tells her his plans excitedly, only stopping to feel embarrassed at his demeanor when he catches her eyes on him. He tries to draw back a bit. 

“So, what do you think?” he asks after his barrelling description, wondering suddenly if this was just a lark to keep him occupied. “I think you’re an asset, Bokan Rook,” Jordi says, echoing Saw’s own words about him with a glint in her eyes. Bokan smiles, looking down at his calloused hands, and thinking of how real life feels now that he’s working toward something bigger than himself. 

“I hope so,” he answers.

\---

Jordi stops by his room a lot, complaining again and again that he isn’t up yet. He doesn’t know if she thinks he’s weak, or if she just wants him to fight back against her mocking. Whatever her aims, she goads him out of bed, telling him stories of all her own past injuries with pride. She shows him around the catacombs, the old tech he’d be working with. He’ll have his work cut out for him.

It’s another week before he’s well enough to go into the city. He’s been healing slowly and settling in. He feels like he might be able to do some good. Saw had clearly been intrigued by Bokan, and it’s a faith he doesn’t mean to waste.

He’s already been doing some work fixing up the old comm systems by building in new fail safes for their generator, not an easy task in the dusty surroundings. When the others go for supplies he feels well enough to take the trip. He aches to see his home as much as he can’t imagine returning to a life of complacency there. He’s unsure if he wants to tell his mother that he’s alive, only to leave her for the cause again. It will be easier to decide when he can see her with his own eyes.

He reaches home past dusk, careful that no one who knows him sees, needing to just look in before anything else. If he goes back, it would be too dangerous, too impossible to face if he put his mother in harm’s way. 

What he sees through the kitchen window fills him with hurt, the flare of anger against his brother - his enemy - that still hasn’t faded. Bodhi is back from the academy, standing at their mother’s side with an Imp patch proudly displayed on his shoulder, like it doesn’t mean anything. Cruelly, he wonders how Bodhi had taken the news of his death, if he cared at all that the forces he’d joined were to blame for the explosion. 

As much as he wants to turn away, curiosity keeps him still and silent. Bokan watches his brother’s domesticity - cutting vegetables, and cooking food they never could afford without Imperial blood money. His mother looks smaller somehow, her eyes wide and watching Bodhi like he might disappear too. There’s a wistfulness settled in her features, too much like the one he sees in the mirror. She’s safe though, for now. Bokan supposes that’s all he can hope for her. Bodhi kisses the top of her head as he passes and Bokan ducks down out of sight, unable to bear his own want to reach out and embrace her one last time. One of the Partisans whistles at him from down the path, signalling it’s time to go. Bokan leaves without looking back. _She always loved Bodhi more anyway_.

\---

It’s a hard night, out setting out explosives to delay the completion of the Empire’s newest mine shaft. Bokan had been thrilled to be trusted on the mission, alongside Jordi as usual. Their partnership is something stable in the midst of everything uncertain. She’d probably call him a sap for thinking so, but they do work well together.

Their instincts are put to test when they spot a ‘trooper coming too close to avoid. Always faster, Jordi pushes Bokan flat against the wall before he can react. He fumbles for the blaster at his hip, but she stills him with a hand, eyes searching the darkness for the glint of plastoid armor. The trooper doesn’t spot them immediately, and Bokan tries desperately to think of something, a way that they don’t end up in jail or martyrs for the cause. He hears the yell of halt before he can do anything, still itching to rush forth with his blaster blazing, but finds himself being kissed instead. Jordi kisses him and he drowns in it, letting the sensation wash over his confusion. He hears the stomp of boots coming closer and only then does she pull away, putting on an act of embarrassment. He’s sure he looks flushed enough even without pretending.

“State your business,” the ‘trooper grunts out coldly through his modulator. 

“We were just out on a date and we got caught up,” she answers, looking duly intimidated and apologetic. “There’s a curfew in effect, you should know better. Scandocs now,” he states. 

Bokan tenses, but Jordi just smiles sweetly and reaches into her pocket. Her blaster is out and the ‘trooper is dead before Bokan can breathe. He’s about to speak when she presses a hand to his lips, listening for a sign of other guards, but there are none. No warning alarm will sound until the ‘trooper fails to report in, giving them a good few minutes. They are safe but hurried as they finish placing the bombs, set to blow within the hour.

“That was some shooting,” Bokan says, staring at the body. Jordi rolls her eyes and nudges him, eyes everywhere still watching out. 

“C’mon lets get out of here,” she says, and they sneak their way through the streets back to the desert. When they get back to the catacombs, they report in that all is set, that they ran into one ‘trooper, but Jordi had subdued him easily with a diversion. The Partisan on guard duty, Arden, smiles at that and congratulates them both on a good job. “We’ll see how good it was when they go off,” Jordi says with a grin. She isn’t watching him any special way, though and despite the twinge in his chest when he thinks of her lips, Bokan realizes that there is no place for that here.Maybe in another world.

\---

The kiss makes him nostalgic in the days after, more than anything else. Beyond fixating on Jordi, Bokan remembers closeness, almost yearning for it. His first kiss had been with Aalia, the girl that lived next door, when they were both sixteen. After, he had found out she liked Bodhi, and had only used Bokan to get his attention. The fact that Bodhi still didn’t even notice her had made Bokan sulk all the more at the time. Now, it all felt so small. 

‘ _Would she rather have an Imperial or a Partisan now?’_ Bokan pushes away the useless thought as best he can. Something as stupid as an imagined lovelife shouldn’t be enough to keep him up, the selfishness of the thoughts the exact thing he wishes he could drown out entirely. Still, he can’t sleep. He rolls off of his bedroll with a sigh, looking blearily at the time, long before dawn. He sets off for the mechbay, to tinker with something, to be _useful_ , just to combat the feelings kicked up in his chest. To his surprise, Jordi is there too, though she looks as though she’s headed out. Saw is standing there as well, face grim like he’s seen the enemy. Bokan wonders if he’s slept through some alarm. 

“What’s going on?” Bokan asks, suddenly wishing he’d gotten dressed instead of ambling out in his sleep clothes. 

“Just got a message in from my brother, I’ve got to go,” Jordi says, not looking up as she pulls on her jacket and turns to get her gear packed. Bokan hadn’t even known she had a brother. 

“Javaad is a pilot and he’s gone AWOL from the Alliance, I have to get him back home before he runs off his mouth again,” she continues, sounding frustrated and almost _scared_ as she gathers her things. He’s never heard her that way. Bokan must look confused by the statement, because Saw speaks to him directly next. 

“Her brother reported that the Alliance was cutting ties with us, says we’ve gotten too volatile for them to control. I’d expected this betrayal, but not so soon,” Saw explains, with more regret than rage.

“Control? That’s absurd, we’re all on the same side. If we’re volatile it’s because the Empire has made us this way, can’t they see that things on the ground are different than in their ivory towers?” Bokan says all at once, overcome with a flash of anger at the thought that their supposed allies are abandoning them now. 

“It would appear not. My brother said as much and they nearly jailed him,” Jordi breaks in, shifting on her feet with want to run. Saw nods to her and she turns, placing a hand on Bokan’s shoulder.

“Keep fighting,” Jordi says with a sharp nod, and then she’s gone off into the night. 

In her absence, Bokan wishes he were dreaming all this, that their allies would trust their judgment, that they had any hope of taking down the Empire without Alliance intelligence channels. 

Saw fixes him with a look at his clear spiraling discontent and speaks again. “Don’t lose sight of things. We will plan and we will fight.” 

Bokan nods and sees himself back to his room, quietly shaken and considering the uphill war ahead. Darkly, he wonders how long it will take for the Alliance to abandon the cause entirely and leave them to face the Empire alone.

\---

Without the Alliance to back them up, things do change. Instead of fighting less, though, it feels like Saw has been let off a leash. He has the cadre staging public ambushes, breaking down Imperial equipment, setting more bombs - this time in the barracks. They push back with a fierceness that cannot be ignored, and with every distraction Saw promises that they are holding back the enemy, that they are winning piece by piece. When more ‘troopers pour into the city, it sometimes becomes hard to believe.

It’s on a day fraught with fighting that Bokan finds out his mother is dead. He’s just gone down through the city for medical supplies, from a kind older woman who probably knows too much, but never betrays the Partisan’s secrets. His face is wrapped in disguise, as he skirts close to his old neighborhood on the way back. Funny that he’s more afraid of running into a neighbor than an Imperial most days. A group of stormtroopers march through, and Bokan leans back against the side of a wall by an open cafe window, trying to look casual. The troops stop and linger, questioning people across the way. Bokan tries to listen in to their interrogation, see what they might be after this time, but his focus is completely shattered when he hears his mother’s name cut through the clatter of people inside the cafe. He turns toward the sound sharply, not caring if it’s unsubtle, and listens.

 _“It’s such a shame, her husband dead, left alone with those beautiful twins all those years only for them to leave her too.”_ The first woman says.

 _“Was such a shame when Bokan died...Amara was never the same after that.”_ The first woman nods, and Bokan realizes he recognizes both of them from the laundry service where his mother had worked in their youth, before their father died.

_“And then the other, lost in that uniform…his money did no good in the end.” She tsks. “May she rest in peace now, at least.”_

The other woman murmurs in sympathetic agreement. Their conversation moves on, but Bokan can barely feel anything past the sick feeling in his gut. He shuts his eyes and buries his face in his hands, sliding down the wall to wrap his arms around his knees, holding back from crying and knowing it’s because he’s in shock. He pulls back the scarf from his face just to breathe, feeling like a lost child. He sits there until the cafe owner comes out to scold him for loitering. The stormtroopers had come and gone and he hadn’t even noticed. Bokan takes a deep breath and presses his way through the crowd, heading in the opposite direction of the catacombs, towards home.

No one is there, so he slices in through the door with his old code. He goes to her room and sits. Her things are in disarray, like she never would have left them herself. Where she will never be again. His anger pushes past the pain, anger that Bodhi hadn’t protected her like he was meant to, and that anger pulls him over the edge of grief. He lets out a choked sob, holding the blanket she’d knitted clutched tight in his hands. It’s only when his comm crackles in his pocket, sending out a code in binary asking his status and questioning the delay that he can shake himself and remember. This is hardly his life anymore, hardly anything, he has to...the thought feels stuck in his mind, he can barely find the resolve to move with her things around him, so he stands and moves forward with clipped steps until he’s outside again. 

He doesn’t take anything with him. He keeps walking until his feet ache, through passages and alcoves he knows best, out to the desert and clear sunset sky.

He explains the hold up when he returns to the catacombs, telling only of the stormtroopers and not his mourning. His comrades are trusting of his word, not caring as long as he has the supplies intact.

Her funeral must be soon. Bokan doesn’t say anything to anyone, looks up the information on the holonet with pained eyes. The day comes, and he slips out early, settling at the edge of the ancestral plot out past the mountains. Far enough away to witness, but not to be seen. He waits an hour until Bodhi arrives with the Guardian and her body, burnt down to fit in a small box that Bodhi clutches in his hands. His eyes are blank as he stands in his dark Imperial gray clothes, while the stranger says words from memory to honor Amara Rook. The same words that had been said over an empty box that lies in the ground nearby, his own grave.

He tries to muster more than the hatred he has for Bodhi’s failings, for her sake, but he can’t. He turns away as Bodhi kneels to cover her in the dust, to say the goodbye Bokan deserves so much more. He won’t return to this place again.

\---

Without the Alliance supporting them, the war on Jedha churns on. The Empire becomes more bold, the shadow of the Imperial Star Destroyer an ever present looming shadow over NiJedha. There are children in the center of town who haven’t seen the sun in weeks, parents too frightened to let them venture beyond the city walls in the midst of so much chaos. The day the temple falls is the only time Bokan cries for the cause. The Guardians are scattered to the wind or worse in the aftermath.

As he and Saw’s forces tried to interceded, Bokan had watched a few of them fight to stop the ‘troopers, watched them fall with the hiss of blaster fire without hope. There were few who survived, fleeing the city to bide their time and pray to the Force for guidance. Bokan knows there will be nothing left to protect soon. For all their diversionary tactics and explosions, Saw’s forces must flee too, with too much left to fight for and nowhere near enough firepower.

Back at the catacombs, Bokan sets off to be alone. He wonders if any of the others, most of whom are from off world, had understood the chasm building in his chest as he saw his culture gutted. He and Bodhi had played on the temple steps. Bokan tries to focus on the image past his bitterness, grasping to remember the sounds of the old chants so they won’t be lost. 

For once, he doesn’t let his anger get in the way of grief. 

\---

When Bokan is twenty five, he hears his brother’s name rattled through every Imperial signal in the city. He wishes he felt sorry. All he can muster, though, is the old bitterness etched in his heart, that it serves Bodhi right for joining in the first place. To be a fugitive now, to live as Bokan has for years in the underground, is only fair. Bokan has spilled blood for this and though he doesn’t know the details of Bodhi’s defection, he wonders if Bodhi has now too. He could respect that, maybe. 

Bokan raises the scarf across his throat up over his face, all too aware of the scrutiny his appearance would surely draw. Sharing your face with a so called traitor has that effect. Bokan only goes still for a moment when he sees Bodhi again. His hair is long, the way their mother had always loved it, and he still has the stupid goggles he’d worn since they were twelve. Bokan doesn’t speak, letting another Partisan pull his brother into an alcove to question his intentions in coming here and in raining down so much interest from the Imperials on them. The near stranger with his face stutters on about a message, a weapon, sounding frantic and lost. 

Bokan wants to laugh at the audacity, to come this far with only dawning horror at the apocalypse they’ve all been living. If Bodhi is afraid now he deserves it, if he’s lying he deserves worse. Maybe Bodhi had simply become lonely enough to be fooled by the kind words of this Galen Erso he goes on about. Knowing how soft hearted he always was, it’s not hard to imagine.

They drag Bodhi out to the desert anyway, to get away from the stormtroopers canvassing the city. They let Benthic and Edrio decide if the risk of the attention Bodhi has drawn is worth keeping him. Bodhi holds out a data chip and Benthic growls, seeing nothing more than the Imperial patch on his arm. Still, they bag Bodhi coldly, ignoring his cries instead of killing him on the spot.

Saw is not impressed or vexed by the fact that Bodhi shares Bokan’s face. It’s what he’s expected. Even in his paranoia, Saw doesn’t question Bokan’s loyalty in the matter, knowing that Bokan had cut ties long ago. Family meant nothing if you were all dying. Bokan watches Saw’s interrogation, listens to Bodhi’s desperate pleas, and feels unmoved. Bodhi looks so shocked that Saw doesn’t believe him. Bokan almost envies his naivety, as if he could shirk off his years of service to the Imperial machine with a wish and be trusted.

Bor Gullet is a condemning name to hear, but Bokan trusts Saw’s judgement over his brother’s comfort. Still, he half wants to go speak to Bodhi before it happens, before his mind and all their shared memories are shredded to the wind. He decides against it in a singular moment of sympathy. It’s better not to haunt him now, for all he’s about to hurt. Bokan had survived Bor Gullet once.It’s fingers were long reaching even when you submitted willingly. He can’t imagine soft, naive Bodhi going up against his own regrets that way.

Bokan doesn’t watch, he isn’t that sadistic. He goes back to taking stock of arms and monitoring the news feeds for signs that someone tracked them to the catacombs. Bodhi’s presence on the planet has drawn more ‘troopers by the hour and Bokan feels nothing but resentment. He notes the eyes on him from a few of the other Partisans, how they track him now, as if he were an outsider. He wonders if his brother will ruin this life for him too.

\---

With Bodhi locked in the cell before him, Bokan wonders if there was ever a point where this could have been avoided. If there was ever a way they could have fought together, instead of at violent odds. 

_If Bodhi had commed, if he’d said; “Brother, I’m sorry, please help me come home,” after the first night at the academy, would Bokan have rushed to his side like always?_ Wondering is a useless exercise and still it nags him to see Bodhi hurt now, lying out on the floor in the cold dirt. Picking Bodhi out of fights was once a common pastime, and now he watches as his brother writhes in pain on the stone floor. Bokan tries to feel the nothingness he has for years towards the man and fails, unable to break from the memory of his mother’s concerned voice when Bokan would carry Bodhi home. Angry at himself, he turns away. 

“Bokan,” Bodhi’s voice cries out, like they’re kids again and he’s just woken from a nightmare. Bokan doesn’t know if he’s caught in a memory or if Bodhi actually recognizes him through the shadows. They used to curl together after bad dreams, Bodhi describing the faces of the people who took their father in perfect detail as he cried. Bokan had wondered then why nobody had done anything to stop them, how they could just stand by blindly. It’s something he still has no answer for, as he steps into the light, the movement drawing Bodhi’s wide eyed gaze.

“You’re dead,” Bodhi says, voice tinged in horror still. Bokan pushes past the traitorous sympathy cloying in his chest to smile sharply at the accusation.

“Not yet, brother.”


End file.
